Web Review, Week 2024-19
Let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-19.
Heat Death of the Internet - takahē
Tags: tech, internet, web, satire, criticism
Obviously a satire, some of it feels eerily real though.
https://www.takahe.org.nz/heat-death-of-the-internet/
“AI now beats humans at basic tasks”: Really?
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, research, benchmarking, criticism
Nice article. It’s a good reminder that the benchmarks used to evaluate generative AI systems have many caveats.
https://aiguide.substack.com/p/ai-now-beats-humans-at-basic-tasks
Did GitHub Copilot really increase my productivity?
Tags: tech, ai, copilot, productivity
Interesting data point. This is a very specialized experience but the fact that those systems are kind of random and slow clearly play a good part in limiting the productivity you could get from them.
https://trace.yshui.dev/2024-05-copilot.html
AI Copilots Are Changing How Coding Is Taught - IEEE Spectrum
Tags: tech, ai, copilot, ethics, programming, teaching, learning
Well, maybe our profession will make a leap forward. If instead of drinking the generative AI cool aid, if we really get a whole cohort of programmers better at critical skills (ethical issues, being skeptical of their tools, testing, software design and debugging) it’ll clearly be some progress. Let’s hope we don’t fall in the obvious pitfalls.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-coding
Machine Unlearning in 2024 - Ken Ziyu Liu - Stanford Computer Science
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copyright, gdpr
Interesting questions and state of the art around model “unlearning”. This became important due to the opacity of data sets used to train some models. It’ll also be important in any case for managing models over time.
https://ai.stanford.edu/~kzliu/blog/unlearning
Systemd heads for a big round-number release [LWN.net]
Tags: tech, linux, systemd
Indeed the next systemd release feels feature packed. Definitely to keep an eye on.
https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/971866/f244aee59d4d6a66/
UEFI, BIOS, and other confusing x86 PC (firmware) terms
Tags: tech, bios, uefi, hardware
Confused? Well, not surprising we mostly use those terms with very lax definitions.
https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/UEFIAndBIOSAndOtherPCTerms
It’s always TCP_NODELAY. Every damn time. - Marc’s Blog
Tags: tech, tcp, networking
Getting network protocols right is definitely difficult.
https://brooker.co.za/blog/2024/05/09/nagle.html
Why Full Text Search is Hard
Tags: tech, language, search
If you wonder why information retrieval from natural language texts is a tough domain, here is a short article listing the important things to keep in mind.
https://transactional.blog/blog/2023-why-full-text-search-is-hard
All error messages are necessarily bad to some degree
Tags: tech, failure, ux
Not a reason to make no effort into having as proper error messages as possible. Still there’s some truth there that trying to have a really useful error message is a fool’s errand.
https://www.haskellforall.com/2024/05/all-error-messages-are-necessarily-bad.html?m=1
pyspread
Tags: tech, python, qt, spreadsheets, tools
Looks like a fun spreadsheet tool where you can use Python in any cell.
The UX of UUIDs | Unkey
Tags: tech, uuid, encodings
Interesting set of tricks around UUIDs to make them easier to manipulate.
https://www.unkey.com/blog/uuid-ux
Build your own HTMX
Tags: tech, web, frontend, htmx
Excellent exercise in understanding how HTMX works under the hood.
https://joshi.monster/posts/build-your-own-htmx/
No, I don’t want to fill out your contact form - Adam Jones’s Blog
Tags: tech, web, email
Good exploration of the many ways contact forms fail us regularly. Also shows a few cases where you might still want to us them… in most cases you shouldn’t.
https://adamjones.me/blog/dont-use-contact-forms/
What You Need to Know about Modern CSS (Spring 2024 Edition) – Frontend Masters Boost
Tags: tech, web, frontend, css
Looks like a good reference about everything which can be done with the latest CSS evolutions.
https://frontendmasters.com/blog/what-you-need-to-know-about-modern-css-spring-2024-edition/
Google Testing Blog: Test Failures Should Be Actionable
Tags: tech, tests
Good advice indeed. Having asserts using appropriate matchers can go a long way understanding what went wrong.
https://testing.googleblog.com/2024/05/test-failures-should-be-actionable.html?m=1
Simplicity is An Advantage but Sadly Complexity Sells Better
Tags: tech, complexity
Definitely this. We tend to like complexity too much as a profession and field. It’s also a good reminder that the complexity of the problem and the complexity of the solution shouldn’t be conflated.
https://eugeneyan.com/writing/simplicity/
Programming mantras are proverbs - lukeplant.me.uk
Tags: tech, programming, culture, craftsmanship
Interesting take about the mantras often used in our profession. They shouldn’t be treated as laws, but as proverbs carrying a piece of contextual wisdom. It’s thus unsurprising that they tend to contradict each other. This contradiction should make us pause and think.
https://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/programming-mantras-are-proverbs/
Refactor: Inline-Adjust-Extract - XP123
Tags: tech, programming, refactoring
Since there’s a clear tendency in the developers I meet to “extract at all costs”, this is a good reminder that sometimes you need to inline the code first. This very often brings better clarity in the context of use. In turns this leads to a better final extraction.
https://xp123.com/refactor-inline-adjust-extract/
Bye for now!